Mazes and Monsters - by Rona Jaffe (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From the New York Times-bestselling author of The Best of Everything, four college friends take a fantasy role playing game too far and encounter madness.

It was only a game, they told themselves. A way to escape the pressures of college life. A bonding experience for four friends. But soon taking on a role, getting lost in the fantasy world of Maze and Monsters, was everything.

For Jay Jay Brockway, role playing games were a way of escaping the loneliness he felt as the neglected child of overachieving parents.

For Robbie Wheeling, the game kept him from the grief that ate away at him and his family after the loss of his brother.

Kate Finch relishes her warrior role in the game, her tough veneer keeping her safe from the pain of loving and losing--again.

And for Daniel Goldsmith, playing the game frees him from the perfection his parents expect of him.

But when Jay Jay, Kate, Robbie, and Daniel take the game one step further by immersing themselves in a real-life maze, soon the line between reality and fantasy becomes blurred, with devastating consequences.

Praise for the writing of Rona Jaffe:

"Vivid and trenchant . . . Wry and very readable . . . A minor genius." --The New York TimesBook Review

"Jaffe has not lost her wit, her keen eye for human frailties and her ear for the small but telling remark." --Publishers Weekly

"Reading Rona Jaffe is like being presented with a Cartier watch: you know exactly what you're getting and it's just what you want. Put your feet up, take the phone off the hook, and enjoy." --Cosmopolitan

About the Author

Rona Jaffe (1931-2005) was born in Brooklyn, New York. She attended the Dalton School and graduated from Radcliffe College in 1951 at the age of nineteen. In her early twenties, she worked at Fawcett Publications, starting as a file clerk and working her way up to associate editor. At twenty-five, she quit her job to focus on her novel The Best of Everything (1958). She went on to write sixteen more books during her career including Mr. Right Is Dead (1965), The Other Woman (1972), Family Secrets (1974), Class Reunion (1979), The Road Taken (2000), and The Room-Mating Season (2001). In 1995, she established The Rona Jaffe Foundation, supporting promising emergent women writers. Jaffe died of cancer in 2005.